‘Wide Acre’ by Nathan Ballingrud

Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters is one of the very best collection of North American weird fiction I have read; like Raymond Carver if he embraced the weird fiction tradition running from H.P. Lovecraft to Laird Baron. ‘Wide Acre’ is essentially a story of PTSD, but one that also features a werewolf. Not as metaphor or allegory, but neither as a key part of the narrative. What is important the fallout from the horrific event; the attack that kills his friends and traumatizes the protagonist also ruins his life. The implication being that some events can never be got over.

First published in Visions Fading Fast,Vol. 1, 2012, collected in North American Lake Monsters, Small Beer Press, 2013